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Presidential Address: English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century: II, New Poor and New Rich.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

F. M. L. Thompson
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Extract

The notion that the great leviathans of wealth, who had for so long been accustomed to taking first place in a nation of snobs which contrived simultaneously to accept, admire, envy, and criticise their opulence, might actually become impoverished first began to gain some currency in the 1890s. True, this had been anticipated by a few specially pessimistic and debt–ridden landowners in the immediate anxieties aroused by the Repeal of the Corn Laws. Lord Monson, who had inherited from a cousin estates liberally furnished with dowagers and other inescapable expenses, and who was in despair at the tendency of income to fall while outgoings remained fixed, exploded to his son in 1851: ‘What an infernal bore is landed property. No certain income can be reckoned upon. I hope your future wife will have Consols or some such ballast, I think it is worth half as much again as land’. A similar but more sober banker's view had been put by Evelyn Denison, a classic gentlemanly capitalist, in 1847 when he announced his intention to sell much of his land ‘not because I am of the class of encumbered landlords, for I have luckily extricated myself from that, but because I do not think it worth while to keep a security paying 2 per cent, when I can get an equally good one paying ’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 1 , December 1991 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1991

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References

1 Lincoln Record Office, Monson MS, 25/10/3/1, no. 19, 22 Nov. 1851; Sheffield Public Library, Wentworth Woodhouse MS, G 20, J. E. Denison to Lord Fitzwilliam, 18 Aug. 1847. Quoted in Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (1963), 290Google Scholar.

2 The Times, 14 Aug. 1848, leader on the disgrace of the Duke of Buckingham ‘who has struck a heavy blow at the whole order to which he unfortunately belongs’. Annual Register, 1848, 125–9Google Scholar. See also , D. and Spring, E., ‘The Fall of the Grenvilles, 1844–8’ Huntington Library Quarterly, XIX (1956)Google Scholar; Thompson, F. M. L., ‘The End of a Great Estate’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. VIII (1955)Google Scholar.

3 For the Duke, of Newcastle, The Times, bankruptcy reports, 3 06 1869, II, to 27 Jan. 1871, 11Google Scholar; the Duke, with heavy racing debts, eventually paid 5s. in the £ to his creditors. For the Earl of Winchilsea, , The Times, bankruptcy reports, 6 10 1870, 11, to 30 June 1871, 10Google Scholar; the Earl tried to sell the Hatton Collection to the British Museum, which he said ‘have been buried for the last 200 years and have been of no use to anyone’, but the B.M. offered only £ 1,800, against his asking price of £ 10,000.

4 Wilde, Oscar, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)Google Scholar.

5 Punch, 30 June 1894, reproduced in Cannadine, D., The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990), 96Google Scholar.

6 Ensor, R. C. K., England, 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1936), 288–9Google Scholar.

7 Offer, A., Property and Politics, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, 1981), 205—7Google Scholar. Milner had a mistress, which gave him some kind of interest in the taxation of illegitimate children.

8 English, B., ‘Probate Valuations and the Death Duty Registers’ Bulletin of the Institute 0f Historical Research, LVII (1984), 80–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Collinge, J. M., ‘“Probate Valuations and the Death Duty Registers”, Some Comments’, Historical Research, LX (1987), 240–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thus, P.R.O. IR 26/3228, ff. 518–22, opened in 1880 to account for the estate of John Michael Williams of Caerhays Castle, Burncoose, Cornwall, copper magnate, was still active in 1946, recording the deaths of his daughters.

9 The rates of the duties are most easily accessible in the annual editions of Whitaker's Almanack; it is interesting that all these duties were collectively described as ‘the death duties’ in the annual reports of the Commissioners of the Inland Revenue for many years before 1894.

10 Finance Act, 1881, 44 Viet. cap. 12, sec. 38; and see 25th Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, P.P. 1882, XXI, 39. A second attempt to impose a tax on gifts inter vivos was made in 1910: Offer, Property and Politics, 111.

11 Fforde, M., Conservatism and Collectivism, 1886–1914 (Edinburgh, 1990), 86–7Google Scholar.

12 Speech at Newcastle, 9 Oct. 1909, quoted in Halevy, E., A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, VI, The Rule of Democracy (1932, English translation 1961 edn.), 298Google Scholar.

13 Jenkins, Roy, Mr Balfoufs Poodle (1968 edn.), 88–90Google Scholar.

14 The land clauses of the 1909–10 Finance Act were repealed in 1920. The historians' guide to the land valuation records is Short, B. and Reed, M., Landownership and Society in Edwardian England and Wales:The Finance (1909–10) Act Records (University of Sussex, 1987)Google Scholar.

15 See Fforde, , Conservatism and Collectivism, 23–41Google Scholar for a recent restatement.

16 Fforde, , Conservatism and Collectivism, 107 (Lansdowne), and 151 (Bentinck)Google Scholar.

17 Paxman, J., Friends in High Places (1990), 29Google Scholar.

18 ‘Britain's Rich: The Top 200’, Sunday Times, 2 April 1989, 46, credits Devonshire with 70,000 acres in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Sussex. Paxman, , High Places, 29Google Scholar, states that ‘Chatsworth alone runs to 26,000 acres.’ In 1883 Devonshire owned 120,000 acres in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Sussex, and overall 198,000 acres which included 60,000 acres in Ireland.

19 Cannadine, , Decline and Fall, 103–12, 125–38Google Scholar.

20 The sample, covering all sales reported in the Estates Gazette in which the vendor is identified (including sales by corporate owners), was drawn by my research assistant, Dr Andrew Rowley; without his resourceful, painstaking, and patient help it would have been impossible to write this paper.

21 Robinson, J. M., The Latest Country Houses (1984), 79Google Scholar. Strong, R., Binney, M., and Harris, J., The Destruction of the Country House, 1875–1975 (1974), plate 113, and 190Google Scholar.

22 Burke1's Peerage and Baronetage (1949 edn.); Who's Who (1980 edn.).

23 Cannadine, , Decline and Fall, 403Google Scholar; Thompson, , English Landed Society, 319–20Google Scholar.

24 Fox, J., White Mischief (1984), 52–68Google Scholar.

25 Burke's Landed Gentry (1937 edn.), first 20 ‘former gentry’ under letter ‘S’.

26 Monson, N. and Scott, D., The Nouveaux Pauvres: A Guide to Downward Nobility (1984)Google Scholar, cited by Cannadine, , Decline and Fall, 660Google Scholar.

27 Sunday Times, 2 Sept. 1990, for angry comments by some aristocrats, new and old, on pre-publication copies of Cannadine, Decline and Fall.

28 The striking and illuminating phrase is that of Fforde, , Conservatism and Collectivism, 167Google Scholar.

29 Scott, J., The Upper Classes: Property and Privilege in Britain (1982), 123Google Scholar.

30 Burke's Landed Gentry (1972 edn.), editorial preface, III, ix.

31 Kelly's Directory of Hertfordshire (1890 and 1912 edns.). The houses checked are: Aldwickbury, Batchwood, Childwickbury, Gorhambury, Lamer House, Mackerye End, Marshallswick, Oaklands, Sandridgebury, and Wheathampstead House.

32 Thompson, F. M. L., ‘Life after Death: How Successful Nineteenth-Century Businessmen Disposed of Their Fortunes’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. XLIII (1990), 40–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Rubinstein, W. D., ‘British Millionaires, 1809–1949,’ B.I.H.R. XLVIII (1974), 202–23Google Scholar, for lists of millionaires. Before 1914 Who's Who was a moderately good guide to landowning; after that individuals increasingly tended not to mention their landowning or the size of their estates, although a few continue to do so in the 1990s.

34 Harrod, R. F., The Life of John Maynard Keynes (1951), 162, 287, 300–1, 389Google Scholar. It is only fair to add that Keynes was not always a seller of land at this period, and bought some for the College and some far himself in the trough of the most acute years of agricultural depression between 1929 and 1932.

35 Leverhulme, , Estates Gazette, 23 02 1918, 176Google Scholar; 13 Sept. 1919, 357; 24 Jan. 1920, 133; and Dictionary of Business Biography, III, 747. Cowdray, , E.G., 17 07 1921, 392Google Scholar; 21 Jan. 1922, 89. Melchett, , E.G., 8 06 1929, 840Google Scholar. Lukel, , E.G., 21 07 1934Google Scholar; and D.B.B. III, 515. Vestey, , E.G., 22 09 1928, 401Google Scholar; this estate was purchased from the dowager Lady Nunburnholme, widow of Wilson, C. H., Hull shipping magnate, who had bought the house and estate in 1878 (D.B.B. V, 848)Google Scholar. Cunliffe-Owenl, , E.G., 31 08 1929, 29Google Scholar; and D.B.B. 1, 868. Other purchasers of this period included: Sir William H. Aykroyd, carpet manufacturer, Kenneth Clark, sewing thread manufacturer, Sir Thomas Devitt, shipowner, Sir Arthur Du Cross, tyre manufacturer, Sir Eric Geddes, transport executive, Esmond Harmsworth, press lord, Sir Alfred Hickman, ironmaster, Sir James Hill, wool merchant, Sir Edward Iliffe, press lord, Lord Inverforth, shipowner, Sir Herbert Leon, stockbroker, Sir Alfred McAlpine, contractor, Sir Edward Mountain, insurance underwriter, Sir Mortimer Singer, sewing machine heir, Sir Herbert Smith, carpet manufacturer, Ronald Tree, journalist, Samuel James Waring, furniture retailer, and Hilda Wills, one of the cigarette family.

36 Sunday Times, Rich, Britain's, 1989Google Scholar.

37 Thompson, , ‘Life after Death’, 58Google Scholar.